Replay of Mass Effect. I had to cheat, though, because I forgot that the Mako is mandatory to finish the Ilos level. I had to use a cheat code to spawn it just before the end. So many people have made this mistake and you can’t go back for the Mako if you left it behind, so you are soft-locked out of the ending if you don’t re-spawn it. You’d think they’d have fixed that in the Legendary Edition, but no.

Margaret Atwood uses the term “speculative fiction”, I think partly to get at the difference you are describing. But also partly because she doesn’t think it needs to be “science-y”.

It is true.

No, that’s right. But most Palestinians and their supporters immediate following Oct 7 were supporting Hamas. Israel’s actions of the last year have changed that calculation and now, hopefully, the Palestinians will reject terrorism.

Hmm, maybe cheering for Hamas isn’t a good way to make friends?

True, but we aren’t talking about whether jury nullification should exist. It already does exist and has for a 1000 years. The question is just when to use it. Like any right or privilege, it can be used unjustly. It is up to citizens to make sure it is used for good.

Jury nullification exists precisely because there is often a gap between legality and justice. It’s a way for the commoners to ensure justice when the nobility (CEOs and rich politicians, nowadays) make the laws in ways that exploit the commoners. It’s not so much about law vs. feelings as much as it is about offsetting the power of the powerful.

I don’t think you know what the word “literal” means. But anyway, we disagree about how to categorize what is happening in Israel, and possibly what the solution might be, but I don’t think you are a bad person because of it. I don’t even know you. But I hope you have a good day.

deleted by creator

OMG, this comment is such a simplistic, woke narrative that has nothing to do with reality. Your Marxism is showing.

If you look at the first couple of seconds, it looks like the young fellow was fighting with an older guy in a light blue uniform who staggers off and that’s when the IDF guys started beating on the young fellow. Obviously, there is some preceding conflict that the videographer either didn’t record, or which didn’t suit his propaganda narrative.

Recency bias. Also anti-semitism. I don’t mean that in the sense that any criticism of Israel is necessarily or logically anti-semitic. I mean it in the historical sense. Any time Western societies starts hating on Jews, we really, really need to reflect hard on why.

I know, we all think we are objective enough to separate the Jewish identity from the Israeli identity, but I’m not so sure. Jews are definitely not so sure. It would be interesting to see a study on the correlation between having general anti-semitic views and having negative opinions about Israel.

The part I find strange is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with municipal affairs. I, for one, want my elected municipal officials to do municipal things, like fix roads and ensure the water treatment plant is working. I don’t particularly want them spending their time fighting an abstract battle about our Constitutional framework. Do the majority of Canadians want to revisit our Constitution and eliminate the Crown so that we are no longer a constitutional monarchy? I’m not saying that is a bad idea in principle, but I lived through the constitutional crises of 1980s and the Quebec separatism of the 1990s and it is rife with unnecessary conflict. It could literally break up the country, and almost did. I do not think that we would be better off as a republic, purely from a practical perspective. The Westminster form of government, for all of its anachronistic monarchical symbols, works well in practice.

Obviously monarchy is an outdated concept, but this is a strange hill to die on. The King, or The Crown, is the merely the symbol of Canada’s sovereignty. That’s it. It’s no different than Americans pledging allegiance to the flag. They are not literally pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth anymore than we are literally pledging allegiance to Charles the man. It is just symbology. Neither Charles nor the GG has any real power in Canada and if they ever tried to use their symbolic powers independently of our elected government, it would create an instant Constitutional crisis.

Haha, yes, I was being cheeky. :)

DCS. Easy peasy.

I enjoy listening to Katty Kay and the Mooch. However, I think we hit peak Mooch just before election day.

I am still favour of using the Mooch system for measuring the length of appointments, just for the sake of nostalgia. We need to standardize it, though. Is it 11 days or 10?

This is an interesting case and is sensible. I mean, people have to sleep somewhere.

This is a multi-faceted problem, though. Encampments grow massively in the summer and shrink in the winter. Conversely, the shelters empty out in the summer and fill up in the winter. Why is that? It’s because many homeless people actually do have an indoor place to stay and/or access to a shelter space, but prefer to camp out when the weather is nice. I don’t blame them for that. People are handing out free tents, sleeping bags, and meals where I live. Would you rather sleep on a cot in a big room full of farting, snoring people, or in a nice private tent? However, the ruling doesn’t really apply to people’s preferences. The court ruling is about the struggle for shelter to protect oneself from the elements, not to create a right to camp wherever and whenever they want to because they feel like it.

I’m a big believer in affordable public housing. I think we also need institutions to house people who are not capable or willing to live independently without destroying the home they are given. I’m also in favour of wet shelters for those who are hopelessly addicted to alcohol or drugs. I’m also a believer in shelters to temporarily house people who are transient or waiting to get an affordable home. I’m not a believer in allowing shanty towns to grow unchecked, nor in allowing people to camp wherever and whenever they want to. If there is a shelter bed available, they must use it and too bad about their preferences. No shanty towns. That is just plain unacceptable in a modern developed nation. And, I suspect that 95% of the Canadian population feels the same way.

Thank you. :)

So many assumptions there. I don’t look down on the Palestinian people. I admire their willingness to fight. But, at a certain point, the war is over. You can have an eternal insurgency, or you can make peace. As I said, the issues that would allow Israel and Palestine to live side-by-side have largely been negotiated already. Look, we all get it. The creation of Israel was done poorly. But ongoing events like October 7 are not healthy or sustainable for either side. Israel isn’t going away. It can’t go away. Israel is a fact on the ground. So what is the point of ongoing terrorism like October 7? Obviously, all that terrorism has accomplished is retaliation and death. There is a better way.

The same choices will probably present themselves to the leadership of Ukraine, sadly. If the US and Europe don’t drastically ramp up support for Ukraine and give them long-range weapons, Russia will grind them down. What should the Ukrainians do if they can’t win? Fight to the last man? Achieve a ceasefire and then spend the next 80 years supporting a holy war insurgency against Russia? No, that’s dumb. That’s a good way to lose the world’s support and also get bombed into oblivion by Russia, and make your people miserable and poor. Ukraine isn’t dumb. They’ll negotiate a ceasefire and acknowledge the de facto borders at the time of the ceasefire. Then Ukraine will build up its economy again and wait for Putin to die and for events to turn their way. Then, hopefully, they will join the EU and possibly NATO.

Palestine could do something similar. Go for the two-state deal. Forget about right of return, forget about Jerusalem, drop the religious fundamentalist bullshit. Trade away Gaza to Israel in exchange for removing all of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Or something similar. Unify the Palestinian people in a common geography and a positive vision for the future. Land deals work. Remember that time Israel handed back the Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt? Egypt and Israel are still at peace.

What about compensation? Well, the world will help the Palestinians rebuild if they think Palestine will be stable and not an Iranian puppet supporting a terrorist insurgency. The Saudis alone would probably supply tens of billions of dollars to Palestine if Hamas wasn’t there to hoover it up and convert it into weapons and terror tunnels.

I think we all need to cut out the zero-sum thinking because it leads to people becoming so desperate that they are willing to do literally anything to win.